


a song calls out between the stars

by viscemoth



Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Gen, Miscommunication, Reunions, Temporary Character Death, characters/tags tba as they become relevant, post-Out, post-TBI, the timeline here may not make perfect sense but this is the mechanisms, what are you expecting? them to FOLLOW the rules of the universe? scoff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-13
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:55:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26439853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viscemoth/pseuds/viscemoth
Summary: Despite the statistical improbability of it, Nastya does eventually wake.
Relationships: Lyfrassir Edda & Nastya Rasputina, Nastya Rasputina & The Mechanisms, The Aurora/Nastya Rasputina
Comments: 44
Kudos: 72





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> hello! this is my first attempt at a multichapter fic in uhh. many years. so please excuse me if my writing is rusty lol  
> i just wanted to write a fix-it fic for out and then that evolved into "i want nastya and lyf to be friends" so that's what this is
> 
> this first chapter's pretty short because it serves as more of a prologue, but the word count picks up over the next few chapters
> 
> title is from "starbuck's complaint" by the dreadnoughts, which is a very nastya song imo (no starbuck isn't in reference to the coffee chain)
> 
> enjoy!

Despite the statistical improbability of it (which she's fairly certain is rather high, but she's not Ivy, so who knows), Nastya does eventually wake.

It's not somewhere quiet or calm, like she had hoped. As she slowly drifts into consciousness, like emerging from the depths of the deepest sea, she's only aware of the harshness of bright lights and loud voices. She's disoriented, but can tell she's being moved, and then there's a sharp prick as a needle enters the vein on the inside of her arm—

she remembers cold hands, a cold smile, cold filling her veins she's so cold she feels like she'll freeze to death but she can't die she'll never be warm again—

Nastya's gun is in her hand and her finger pulls the trigger before she even opens her eyes.

It turns out she had been picked up by a vessel. Seeing a body floating in deep space, they had retrieved and tried to resuscitate her, and had been hooking her up to an IV when she shot one of their crew. She begins to come back to herself more quickly, aware of the crew around her yelling in now-panicked voices in a language she does not understand. They attempt to restrain her, but even as sluggish as she is from sleep and cold, their weapons are no match for her increased healing factor and inability to die.

Soon enough, Nastya is alone once again aside from the cooling bodies lying around her. As the haze of adrenaline from the fight fades from her, she sighs and contemplates the airlock, but ultimately decides against it. Instead, she turns to the pilot's seat, and after hacking into their (surprisingly archaic) systems plots a course for the nearest planet—the one the ship was heading away from, it seems.

Setting the system on autopilot, she wanders deeper into the ship, leaving bloodied footprints in her wake. Not being very large, it's easy to find the engine, and she curls up in a small crevice in a futile attempt to chase the chill of space from her bones as she waits.

The ship hums around her, but there is no awareness, no familiarity. This is not her Aurora, and Nastya weeps.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have no idea how frequently this will update; i have the first few chapters finished, but i'm a college sophomore with three separate studio classes so i tend to be uhhhhh busy. oops! i swear i'll finish this though even if it's slow going


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i really tried to wait longer to post this but i'm impatient and would like to post everything i have now, please. also i don't know if posting things at Prime Times is important on ao3 like it is with art on social media but you'll pry posting content at unreasonable times from my cold, dead hands
> 
> (also, a note: i have no beta reader and will miss things a lot on my proofreads, so if you notice something off grammatically (like switching into past tense when it doesn't make sense, capitalization being off, typos/misspellings, Literally Missing Entire Words, etc) feel free to point it out (on this or any other chapter)!)
> 
> this chapter, we get something resembling a plot. or at least something that could evolve into a plot given enough nutrients, water, and sunlight because this is still a bit short. also more nastya angst because what would we be without that

Nastya does not sleep, and as such is interrupted from her thoughtless reverie when alarms start blaring throughout the ship. It is far too soon to have reached her destination, and so she heads to the observation deck to investigate.

When she gets there, however, she is… not quite sure of what it is she's looking at.

The sight in front of her is every color at once and yet colorless, shapes and fractals that she cannot understand swirling before her, all of it undulating in an inconceivable pattern. If she listens close enough, she swears she can almost hear distant song. Nastya can feel her mind attempt to disregard it, skip over it, insisting that this whatever-it-is is _not there_ despite it taking up the entirety of what should be—she realizes with shock as she glances down at the screen with its map—the Yggdrasil system.

As Nastya stands there, attempting to make sense of this senseless thing, she can feel her mechanism begin to… malfunction, almost. Her blood feels sluggish, bright sparks of pain in her veins, and when she looks down at her arms she can see the dull rainbow sheen of her mechanism's self-regulation that is all too similar to the sight before her.

She understands that the planet she was headed for is now gone. Gone where, she is not sure, but certainly nowhere she seeks to follow it. With something like dread, she recalls that when she departed, the Aurora had been heading for the Yggdrasil system with her crew in tow.

Judging by the date showing on the ship's systems, it has been well over a millennium since she had last been awake. This ship had come from somewhere inside of that… _thing_ , so, she reasons, this must have been a recent development. A millennium was enough time for them to have come and gone by now, surely.

(But she knows that Valhöll had been far in the distance when she left; that a millennium, relative to their lifespans, is nothing, and they had stuck around longer to get a story before.)

Well. All of that aside, Nastya needs a change of plans—she doesn't know if this thing is expanding, or how fast, but she doesn't want to stick around to find out if her mechanism is anything to go by. She looks through the system's records, and finds the travel logs. The system states that the ship's original destination when she had boarded had been a colony planet some way away from the Yggdrasil system, and so she selects it as her new destination, figuring that the crew had likely known the best place to head for. Unless they had been operating on panic, which was... also likely.

Nastya decides she'll take her chances.

—

This time around, Nastya doesn't wait in the engine room for the trip to be over. Instead she stays at the pilot's seat, keeping an eye on readings and the vast expanse of space in front of her. She's heading away from what used to be the Yggdrasil system, but she still figures it doesn't hurt to be careful.

It takes several days, but soon enough the planet that is her destination—as well as being the first planet she's seen so far—is in sight. As Nastya nears its atmosphere it occurs to her that perhaps, since she is traveling on a stolen ship full of corpses, she should be more stealthy. So instead of landing in a public space meant for space vessels, she lands herself in the middle of a field, miles from the nearest city. It will certainly be a trek, but hopefully worth it, in order to get information and not chased off the planet in record time.

After a little over an hour of walking through overgrown fields, Nastya finds herself in what appears to be a large, busy city. She had quickly taken stock of the ship's supplies and fuel before setting out; from what she had calculated, she wouldn't have to make more than one trip to get everything she needed. Which was good, she figured, because even though she was immortal, she could still get rather winded.

As Nastya restocks, using money she had taken off of the crew's bodies, she listens intently to the conversations around her for information. She asks no questions, not wanting to draw undue attention to herself, so: eavesdropping. She keeps an ear out for anything suspicious as she browses markets and supply shops.

It isn't hard to find what she's looking for. It seems that over the last several weeks, before it had been swallowed by the thing that had consumed it, the Yggdrasil had been sending out messages: distress signals, news broadcasts, emergency dispatches, and among them, transmissions with no discernible language but plenty of distortion. One by one, they had slowly tapered off, until all that came from the Yggdrasil system was silence.

Unfortunately, Nastya can find no concrete cause in the gossip she hears, and though the events are being discussed on the news channels of the screens she passes, they offer nothing but speculation.

Well. She now has a timestamp for the destruction of the Yggdrasil system, she supposes, but nothing particularly helpful. As she gathers the bags containing her supplies around her, she considers seeking out information, but ultimately decides against it. She wants to move on as quickly as possible, get away from the source of all of this before it expands, even at the cost of information.

Before she sets off again, Nastya takes the time to drag the bodies off of the ship, leaving them in a bloody pile next to where she landed. She's tired after the long walk to the city and back, and almost regrets not having done this beforehand. However, she hadn't wanted to go into town covered in blood (it would defeat the purpose of landing away from the city to keep attention away from herself), and doesn't want to live with the stench of rotting corpse for the next however long she'll be spending on the ship.

After her work is done and the ship is free of any bodies (though not of bloodstains), Nastya takes off. Once she leaves the planet's atmosphere, she checks the system's maps and, exhausted, chooses a nearby planet at random to go to. The day's exercise as well as being in the vicinity of _so many people_ had drained her, and she wastes little time crawling into the engine room to sleep, too tired to mourn the unfamiliar regularity of the ship's sounds.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have no idea how spaceships work and i am bullshitting my way through this. all i know is that this ship absolutely would not have gravity without becoming a fucking centrifuge but i choose to ignore this because it is difficult to have angst when your characters are floating in 0g and/or being tossed about like my clothes when i put them in the washing machine
> 
> anyways we get to have fun things next chapter! like dialogue, and interactions, and violins!  
> so. look forward to that!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in this chapter: nastya accidentally terrorizes a human(?) with a violin

Nastya spends most of the next several days cleaning and organizing the ship's contents. She does her best with what she has, but isn't able to clean out all of the bloodstains, though it's still better than before.

She also takes time to go through and properly catalog and organize the supplies, adding what she had bought to what's already in storage and writing down a full list of everything she now has. She had missed a few things here and there, but nothing important; she'll just have to remember to pick them up next time she stops on a planet for supplies.

Nastya pauses at that thought. When had she decided to keep this ship, to keep restocking it? She certainly has enough here to last her several weeks, if not a few months. When had she decided that she would be traveling with this ship for that long?

She hadn't, really, she realizes, not explicitly. Her brain had just jumped ahead, filled in the gaps, because she _doesn't_ know what she'll be doing in a few weeks or months. She doesn't know where she's going, or what she'll do when she gets there. She has no plan for the future, now, not when she had never expected to wake up.

As she thinks this, Nastya realizes that she doesn't want to just… go back to being unconscious, either. She'd already made that decision once, when she'd first woken up, but she finds she actually doesn't want to cast herself back out into space, to float endlessly until someone finds her again. Since waking she has automatically fallen into the mindset of _keep going_. She doesn't know what that means for her.

Nastya shakes herself out of this train of thought. Right now her only goal is to get information on the Yggdrasil system, to solve the mystery of its destruction, if only to sate her own curiosity. She can focus on what she'll do after she achieves that goal.

—

It's several more days of traveling before anything of note happens. Nastya is far from any planets or stations, and is sitting in the pilot's seat for lack of anything better to do, looking out of the observation window of front of the controls into the black nothingness all around her.

It's as she's sitting here, mind wandering, that she notices something. A speck of color out of the corner of her eye—she leans forward, squinting through the glass, and sees a small vessel, smaller than her own, drifting not too far from her. It doesn't seem to be working—broken, maybe, or more likely abandoned. But based on its trajectory there's a likelihood it came from the Yggdrasil system, and she's still curious to know what happened back there. The ship she's commandeered has a small loading dock, and she brings the vessel in.

As it turns out, there is someone in the pod—a single person, unconscious, but alive. Their vital signs are low, and she infers based on the status of the ship's functions that they had passed out from lack of oxygen.

After a moment of hesitation, she hoists them out of their pod and hooks them up to the same life support systems that her ship's original crew had attempted to use with her when they first found her. She only attaches the oxygen mask, not any IVs; partially because she doesn't think it would be necessary, and partially because of her own negative association with the things. It takes a few minutes, but it seems to work, and before long—somewhat quicker than she thinks they should, actually, but she is unsure of their biology so perhaps this is normal for them—they begin to wake up.

The person blinks awake slowly, squinting up at her blearily from where she's hauled them into the only cot on the ship. After a moment they cast their gaze around the room, and seem to wake up much quicker when they spot the few bloodstains she had been unable to clean up properly. Their gaze flicks back to her, eyes now wide, body stiff. She stares back unwaveringly.

They take off the oxygen mask after another long moment, and shift on the cot to sit up, facing her. "Who… who are you? Where am I?" Their voice is small, scared.

Nastya sees no reason to lie. If they become a nuisance, it will be easy enough to cast them back out into space. "My name is Nastya Rasputina, engineer of—" She cuts herself off before she can finish that sentence. "An engineer," she finishes brusquely.

Before the person can ask anything more, she asks a question of her own. "Are you from the Yggdrasil system?"

"I—what? Yes, how did you know that?" There's an undercurrent of 'what are you going to do to me' in everything they say, evident through their tone and posture and expression, though they try to hide it. (Nastya may not be good with humans, but it doesn't mean she's not good at reading them; all it is is going through a checklist of emotions and associated tells.) She wasn't necessarily trying to intimidate them, but if it gets them to cooperate, she won't complain.

"Based on its trajectory, your vessel came from the general direction of where the Yggdrasil system used to be."

"Oh. Wait, used to—" They cut themself off with a hand over their mouth, seemingly forgetting their fear of her in a moment of dread much stronger. "So it happened, then."

Nastya perks up at this, eyes lighting up as she leans forward. "You know what happened to the Yggdrasil system? Why it is no longer there?"

"I—I," they stutter for a moment. It seems that forgetting their fear hasn't made them any more eloquent, though maybe Nastya should be cutting them some slack, seeing as they just woke up and discovered their entire system had been destroyed (and seem to know the cause). "It's. Complicated?" They snort a derisive laugh. "I don't even think you'll believe me."

"You would be surprised at some of the things I have seen." She sits down next to them on the cot, ignoring the way they flinch away from her. "Tell me. I will decide whether or not I believe you."

"… Alright. It, it started with something called the B-Black Box." And so they tell her the story of the Yggdrasil system's destruction, becoming more confident as they get into it; how the Ratatosk Express had appeared on Midgard, how they had been assigned to a decades-old case, how they had been clueless at what had happened until some very familiar sounding strangers had repaired the Black Box and then they had seen _everything_.

Nastya will admit, even with everything she's experienced in her _very_ long life, elder gods are still out there. That doesn't mean she doesn't believe them, though. This person has clearly gone through something awful, and from the way they tell their story, stuttering and shuddering at certain points with a distant look in their eyes, it doesn't seem like they're lying.

"… and then I left. I didn't tell anyone else, I didn't warn anyone, just—just left a recording behind, rented a small ship, and… left," they finish lamely, losing steam now that they're at the end. "Like a coward," they add after a moment, muttered under their breath.

Nastya ignores the familiar pain that sentiment sparks in her own chest. "I do not think that saving yourself is particularly cowardly, especially given the state of your system." She stands up now that they have finished, hands in her pockets. They look up at her from where they had been staring at their hands in their lap.

"You've seen it, then? The Yggdrasil system?" _Or what's left of it_ , Nastya adds in her head as she nods. "What… what has it become?"

Nastya takes a moment to think about how to answer this, her own gaze becoming distant. "It was… indescribable. It was massive, but I could not comprehend that it was there." She looks them in the eye, not bothering to soften the blow of what she says next. "I do not know what exactly it is that the Yggdrasil system has become, but there is no doubt that the home you are familiar with is now gone."

They don't take this as terribly as she had expected. In fact, it seems like they had been anticipating it. They just sigh and deflate, and don't respond.

Nastya stands there, awkwardly silent for a few moments. This is the sort of situation that would call for comfort, but she's never been good at that, and doesn't even know this person, besides.

At that thought she realizes she's forgotten something in her excitement to get information. "What is your name?"

They look up at her again, squinting in confusion at the sudden change in topic. "What?"

"Your name. I have given you mine, but I do not know yours. It is only fair." She does not mention that she has technically abducted them (she will not kid herself in saying that she saved them for any altruistic means), and that there is nothing fair in this situation. They don't seem to dwell on it either, though that may be for reasons other than her own.

They straighten up, their voice the most confident it has been the entire time they'd been talking. "Lyfrassir Edda, inspector—" They falter again. " _Former_ inspector of the Midgardian Transport Police."

Nastya allows herself a moment to feel a mixture of exasperation and amusement at the fact she's brought a fucking _cop_ onto her stolen ship of bloodstains, previously corpses. Er, former cop. Whatever.

"Well, former inspector Lyfrassir Edda," she says as she turns away towards the direction of the pilot's panel, "Welcome aboard."

—

Nastya pokes around at the controls of the ships, looking through past travel logs and statistics. None of them are of any use, given that most of the places this ship had visited no longer exist. She will admit that she… doesn't really have anything important to do at this panel. She just didn't want to stand around awkwardly as the person she had brought on board—Lyfrassir, she corrects herself—processed the fact that they were now without a solar system, home, family, friends, or way off of her ship. She figured that pretending to be busy was a good way to avoid this scenario.

After a bit, she hears footsteps behind her, but doesn't turn around. If Lyfrassir needs something, they'll ask; if they try to kill her, it will do them no good. She exits out of the logs she'd been reading and brings the ship back to course controls as she feels more than hears them walk up directly behind her.

"Why are you heading _there_?"

She turns around at this, startled, to see them looking in bafflement at the controls. "Что?"

They give her a look at the unfamiliar word, but seems to understand her meaning nonetheless. "This planet that you've set as the ship's destination. It's abandoned, the colonies there died off decades ago. Going there is pointless."

She bristles at this. "Well, excuse me for not exactly being familiar with a galaxy I've never been to before. Do _you_ want to decide where we go?"

They either don't pick up on the sarcasm in that statement (unlikely) or choose to ignore it (more likely). "Sure." They lean over her, and she lets them, a bit taken aback at their calm response. She watches as they delete the ship's current flight plan, and then scroll through a list of other potential destinations. After a moment of deliberation, they choose one, and then lean back. They either aren't aware of how close they still are to Nastya, or have suddenly become much more comfortable in her presence in the past thirty minutes or so.

It must have been the first one, because when she speaks, they jump and take a step back as if they'd forgotten she was there. "Where are we heading now?"

"Ah—er, a planet that serves as a communication and transportation hub. I'd like to see if there's anyone else that managed to escape the Yggdrasil system, and figured this was probably the best place to try and find that out." _And you'd like a way to get away from me and this ship_ , she adds silently, but doesn't say anything. They aren't of any use to her anymore, and she takes no offense at them wanting to get away from someone who has clearly stolen this ship. If it seems like they'll send anyone after her for that, well. She can take care of that when it becomes relevant.

She doesn't respond, and they both fall into silence, either gazing out of the observation window or down at the controls. After several minutes of this, Lyfrassir coughs.

"So, uh. Do you… have anything to do on this ship?"

"No," she says plainly, not looking at them.

"Ah." They shuffle their feet uncertainly. After a moment, they turn and wander away. Nastya ignores them as they leave, and doesn't turn around until several minutes later when she hears a sudden clatter and Lyfrassir shout. At that she does get up, wondering what they've gotten into.

Nastya tracks the noise into the crew's quarters, somewhere she had spent very little time so far. "What are you doing?" She asks from the doorway, peering in. From what she can tell, Lyfrassir had been going through the original crew's belongings, and had accidentally knocked something out of a higher compartment. She doesn't particularly care one way or another, but she is curious why this is where they've decided to explore.

They huff as they bend down to pick up what they'd dropped. "No offense, Rasputina, but I'd rather not sit in silence staring at the void of space and ruminating on my thoughts after what I've been through." They start to pull more things out, looking in bags and cases before setting each aside. "I'm trying to find something to occupy myself with, even if you're content to do absolutely nothing for several weeks until we arrive."

Nastya revises her earlier thoughts on Lyfrassir being comfortable around her. They may not be particularly _comfortable_ with her, per se, but they've adjusted surprisingly well to the situation, at least enough to be snarky. She thinks back on the prisoners they had mentioned having back on Midgard, and how similar they had sounded to her crew, and considers that perhaps Lyfrassir is simply used to this kind of thing by now and has decided to just take everything in stride. It's certainly one way to handle this situation, she supposes.

She watches absently as they continue to go through the old crew's possessions. It's obvious that not all of these could have been hers, but they wisely say nothing about this. She wouldn't kill them, of course, that would be too much effort for something so small, but having a conversation with someone whose life you saved about the fact that you've obviously killed the previous occupants of the ship you're both on is something Nastya doesn't think she has the capacity for either.

Neither of them talk as Lyfrassir inspects the contents of the room and Nastya watches from the doorway, but it's a slightly more companionable silence than back on the bridge. That is, until Lyfrassir pulls out a dark case and curses as they open it.

"Oh, god _damn_ it. You've got to be kidding me."

Curious as to what's gotten them so irritated, Nastya steps over to them and looks over their shoulder, and—

Oh. It's a violin.

Nastya reaches past them to pick the violin and accompanying bow up out of the case, ignoring the splutter Lyfrassir makes as she gets in their personal space. She turns it over in her hands after she straightens up, inspecting it. It's actually a pretty good quality; nothing extravagant, but it's in decent condition and should play well enough.

She places the body of the violin under her chin and closes her eyes as she holds the bow to the strings. Testing the sound, she plays the first few notes of the first song that comes to mind. It's the song the crew would always play to open shows, she remembers, and tries to ignore the tightness in her chest at the thought.

It seems to be in good shape; needs to be re-tuned, but nothing too bad. Satisfied, Nastya smiles and opens her eyes, looking back up at Lyfrassir.

Unexpectedly, the expression on their face is something between looking like they've seen a ghost and faint disgust. She squints at them. "Is something the matter?"

"You're one of _them_ ," they whisper dramatically and accusingly. "I knew it, I _knew_ I wasn't free, that would be too much to ask, wouldn't it?"

"What the hell are you talking about?"

Lyfrassir is almost hysterical now, gesturing widely with their hands with a frantic look in their eyes. "The fucking! Violins, the _singing_ , day in and day fucking out, blabbering on about whiskey and gasoline and never making any sense and the god damn _violins_ —"

She cuts them off as what they're saying catches up to her. "Wait, you've—you've met the crew? Which ones?" She had assumed the prisoners they'd had on Midgard had simply bared a resemblance to her crew, that she'd just been looking for any signs of something familiar—they'd met other immortals, after all, even if none of them were immortal in the same way as the Mechanisms. So it was startling, to say the least, to learn that Lyfrassir actually _had_ met the other Mechanisms, or at least some of them.

"I don't—" They interrupt themself to drag a hand over their face, whispering " _oh god, there's even more_ " under their breath before composing themself somewhat. "Uh, Alexandria, la Cognizi, and von Raum." Nastya nods, thinking. She could have guessed that last one by their ranting about violins, honestly; Marius wasn't the only one of the crew to play violin, herself case in point, but he was the only one who could possibly inspire that kind of hatred for the instrument.

After a moment, Nastya asks, "Did they… make it out of the Yggdrasil system, or were they still there when it had—?" She doesn't let herself finish that thought.

Lyfrassir snorts. "They were gone before I left, so I assume they made it out alright. I doubt even that could kill them, anyways." Nastya refrains from mentioning her suspicious about the Bifrost and her own mechanism, and simply nods.

After a moment where neither of them speak, Lyfrassir claps their hands together and says, "Well! As horribly illuminating as that was, I'd still like to find something to keep my mind off of eldritch horrors for the time being," and turns back to their task of pilfering from the crew's belongings.

Nastya leaves them to it, taking the violin and its case with her as she heads back to the bridge. As much as she hates to admit it, the status of the other Mechanisms had been on the back of her mind ever since she had seen the Bifrost where the Yggdrasil system used to be, and the way relief swept through her at hearing they were okay had left her exhausted.

Nastya decides to continue to ignore that along with all of her other feelings surrounding her crew as she stares, once more, out into the vast nothingness of space.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> nastya: wow lyf is handling this surprisingly well  
> lyf mentally: *john mulaney voice* you know those days where you're like, "life is already so goddamn weird, this might as well happen?"
> 
> a few notes! 1, any russian (or sprussian, as it were) in this fic is ran through google translate (occasionally with a bit of further googling if it's something i have a feeling google translate will get wrong). i sincerely apologize to any russian speakers who may read this. on that note the single word nastya says here is "what?" which i figured would be obvious but i'll include down here just in case
> 
> 2, this marks the end of the chapters i already have finished. i wanted to have at least one more done before i posted this one, but i've been a bit busy and am impatient to post everything. that being said, i hope to have enough time to write at least one chapter (roughly about the length of this one) a week!
> 
> anyways, i hope y'all enjoyed this chapter!!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in this chapter: how to speedrun bonding with your involuntary shipmate with lack of self care & trauma hacks

The first few days of traveling with Lyfrassir are quiet, quiet enough she almost forgets that they're there most times. Only almost, though—Nastya is now used to isolation, and the fact that there is another person near her is a constant presence in the back of her mind.

She finds that it is more difficult to sit and do nothing at the pilot's controls, now, with them on board—because really, there's no reason for her to be there constantly when the ship has a perfectly functioning autopilot, and she had already read through the sparse logs in the computer's system. Something about their presence makes it more difficult to sit and stare into the loneliness of space, even if she is used to it. Nastya may not be very keen on human interaction, but it seems her body and mind crave it anyways, traitorously human as they are.

So, after a few days spent ignoring her companion and alternating between fiddling with screens and staring numbly into space, Nastya decides to get up and look around the ship. Just to stretch her legs, of course, sitting in one chair for so long tends to lead to aches and cramps; and really, it's only reasonable that she take a look around to make sure that Lyfrassir hasn't damaged anything or somehow hurt themself.

Because it would be a hassle to clean up after, and she doesn't know first aid, and it would be very irritating to try and care for an injured mortal until they're able to find a planet with medical services. Not because she's concerned.

Nastya's feet lead her to the engine room first by reflex, and to her surprise it is here that she finds Lyfrassir. They're sat against one of the far walls, away from the engines; the heat is likely too much for them to sit any closer, and the sleeves of their borrowed shirt (they had raided the crew's clothes along with their other belongings, only having one set of clothes on them when they'd arrived) are rolled up past their elbows. Lyfrassir doesn't look up at her as she walks in, but she doesn't announce herself: the loud _clank_ of her boots against the metal flooring of the ship is announcement enough, and she's sure that they know she's there.

She pauses to look at what they're doing, curious at what they have. Sitting in front of them are two connected balls of yarn that they're knitting from, which is a very odd setup for storing yarn—until Nastya looks at them closer and realizes that the large ball is a center-pull, and the smaller ball must be the remnants of whatever previous project Lyfrassir had unwound to get the full length of yarn, unable to be attached back onto the original ball. It occurs to her that this must be what they had found in the crew's belongings to occupy themself with.

Nastya sits down across from them, leaning against one of the engines for warmth (being much more tolerant of the extreme heat than Lyfrassir is), and watches their progress absentmindedly. She can't tell what they're making yet, since they've barely started, but she can't imagine it'll be anything too complicated with no pattern to go off of and the small amount of yarn available.

Both are silent as they sit, neither properly acknowledging the other, but not necessarily ignoring each other, either. Just sitting in quiet companionship, and Nastya thinks that maybe this is okay. Human interaction, conversations with other people involving emotions, are difficult and confusing, but this silence without any expectations is… alright.

Sitting and watching Lyfrassir knit with deft hands, Nastya is suddenly reminded of Jonny. She remembers, when she had first been brought onto the Aurora, newly mechanized, she had had a difficult time adjusting to the lack of feeling in her cold fingers. She had been distraught, to say the least, at no longer being able to play violin; it was the one thing from her home she had left, when she was still young and naive enough to wish for her home.

To help her get used to the feeling and practice her dexterity so she could play violin again, Jonny had taught her to knit—something about learning something new with the unfamiliar feeling being easier than trying to relearn something she'd already known how to do. She's pretty sure that had been a load of bullshit, but it had helped, surprisingly. It was the first and last time she'd ever seen him make anything, but over the years, she would periodically find new knitted blankets, scarves, or any other variety of items strewn about the ship that she'd known she hadn't made. The others had all assumed it was her, since she continued to enjoy knitting even after she'd regained the full use of her hands, and she had never corrected them. She wasn't sure, exactly, why Jonny hid that particular hobby, since most of them had something or other besides violence and destruction that they did to pass the years, but she never pushed him on it.

In the present, Nastya blinks and shakes herself out of the memory. She had left the others, had chosen to leave; no need to dwell on the past.

Still saying nothing, she rises to her feet and heads to the door, ignoring the curious look Lyfrassir gives her at the abruptness of her exit. Still half lost in thought, Nastya makes her way back to the pilot's seat, and spends the rest of what passes for day on the ship there.

—

Lyfrassir doesn't speak to Nastya again until almost a week after she'd picked them up. She's in the pilot's seat, still maintaining her near-vigil, when they come up behind her, saying her name to get her attention.

"Rasputina." She turns to look at them, spinning the chair away from the controls. "There's not enough food on this ship to last two people until we arrive at the next planet. We'll have to ration until then."

Nastya blinks at them, taking a moment to process what they've said. "Oh, you can take the food; it's fine, I do not need it."

They frown at her. "What do you mean, 'you don't need it'?"

"I mean I do not need to eat to survive. I am immortal, not eating won't hurt me."

"But—but the others, the ones that we had in prison, they ate plenty of food." They gesture with their hands as they talk. She finds that they seem to get more animated, more frustrated, any time they talk about one of their lot. She can't exactly blame them; not only do the Mechanisms ignore the laws of the universe by nature, they tend to use this to cause chaos on purpose. She shudders to think of what they've had to deal with.

"Yes, eating is nice, and we're able to do so. However, just because we enjoy it does not mean it is necessary, like how it hasn't been necessary for me to sleep."

"Well—" They take a moment to process what she's just said and freeze, staring at her incredulously. "Wait. Do you mean you haven't been sleeping."

Nastya realizes her mistake. "Uh. N… no?"

"Is that a 'no, I haven't been sleeping', or a 'no, I didn't mean'—you know what, it doesn't matter." Lyfrassir walks briskly over to the pilot's seat and grabs her forearm. "Come with me."

Nastya has to suppress a startled jump at the unexpected touch. "Excuse me?"

Lyfrassir uses their grip on her arm to pull her up out of the chair and towards the door, ignoring her splutters and protests. Their grip is surprisingly strong, and they drag her to the engine room, stopping to grab a pillow and blankets from the crew's quarters on the way there. In the engine room, they finally release her, instead turning to kneel and lay out the things they've collected.

Nastya rubs at the spot on her arm that they'd grabbed as she watches them. "Could you explain why you've dragged me here."

"Well—" They pause for a moment as they lean over to rearrange the blankets before continuing, "I've noticed that when you're not sitting at the ship's controls, you tend to spend your time here. I had _thought_ you had been sleeping when you were back here, but apparently not." Seemingly content with the way they've arranged everything, Lyfrassir gets to their feet, and after giving the setup an appraising look, turns their gaze to her.

They both stare at each other for a moment before Lyfrassir gestures to the makeshift bed. "Well?"

Nastya sighs. "You won't leave me be until I agree to sleep, will you."

"Absolutely not. I'm not letting the person who wants to be in charge of the controls do so while sleep deprived."

After several more moments of staring, locked in a stalemate, Nastya sighs again and leans down to untie the laces of her boots. She might not need to sleep, but that does not mean she will be uncomfortable if forced to do so. She could fight them on this, certainly, but it would take more energy to argue than it would to just comply, even if she's not quite sure why they're suddenly so concerned about her sleeping habits.

"You know," she says, now sitting on the surprisingly soft pile of blankets, "not sleeping does not actually harm me in any way. I don't get any of the ill affects mortals do due to sleep deprivation." She finishes unlacing her boots and pulls them off, crossing her legs as she looks up at Lyfrassir. "I am perfectly capable of using the controls with or without sleep."

Lyfrassir just looks down at her, arms crossed. "Even if it's not taking a toll on you physically—which I'm skeptical about, if you're anything like the others, since they didn't seem to give a shit if the things they did hurt themselves or each other—it's still not good for you, mentally, to be awake for so long. Your brain needs to reset."

She shrugs, still looking up at them from the floor. "If you say so."

"I do." Lyfrassir falters at this point, dawdling for a moment now that they're not ordering her around. "Well. I'll just—" They gesture to the door, taking a step towards it. "I'll just leave you to it, then."

They back out of the room quickly, not giving Nastya time to respond. She just stares after them and thinks.

She doesn't remember someone being this concerned about her since—since the Aurora, actually. Before she had left she had been acting odd, ignoring Aurora when she tried to speak to Nastya because it didn't feel like her, not anymore, not for a while at that point. Aurora had been concerned for Nastya when she had stopped responding, until she finally realized that she was being ignored, and slowly stopped trying to talk to her.

Nastya wonders, for a moment, what would have happened if she had tried to talk to Aurora about how she had felt. Would it have changed anything? Would she still have left?

She doesn't want to think about this.

Instead, she finally lays down, not bothering to pull a blanket over herself with the warmth of the engines so close by. She'll sleep, if only for a little while, if only to placate Lyfrassir. Not for any other reason, of course; after all, she doesn't need to sleep.

And after this, if she continues to sleep whenever Lyfrassir drags her to the engine room and her nest of blankets, it's because it's easier than arguing about it, and not because she wakes feeling better than she can remember since the Aurora.

Of course not.

—

The days pass like this as they near the communications hub, spent mostly in silence with brief interactions, a sort of quiet companionship underlying it all. Nastya isn't foolish enough to think this means Lyfrassir will stay with her once they reach somewhere where they can get another ship of their own, though. When you're stuck in a small space with someone with no way of getting out, it's obvious that getting along and avoiding hostility is the best course of action. Especially when your companion is immortal and probably a murderer.

Nastya also isn't disappointed by the prospect of being alone on her ship again. This is what she had wanted when she set out on her own, after all, she tells herself. Even if she's no longer interested in sleeping forever, floating through space, she still doesn't want to be around others.

When they finally reach the outskirts of the planet, Nastya is immediately reminded of the City. She had only ever seen the city-planet from a distance, but this one has the same spindly towers spiraling into the sky, the entire planet (though it's rather small) covered in tall buildings and connected roadways. Unlike the City, however, there are dozens of small ships heading to and from the planet in an irregular flow, reminding her somewhat of a beehive.

Lyfrassir leans over her shoulder as she pulls in, directing her on what the various signs and signals mean, until they finally find a place to leave the ship. It's a paid parking place, and she huffs at the inconvenience, but obligingly uses some of her stolen money to pay the fee. She can just pickpocket someone later, to make up for it.

They decide to split up, at this point—Lyfrassir mumbles something hurried about looking for other survivors, having been insistent beforehand that anyone from the Yggdrasil would have come here first since it was the most obvious place to look for other survivors or news of what's happened, and Nastya gets the feeling from the way they hastily run off that they don't want her tagging along. Instead, she heads off on another supply run. The previous planet she'd been to had been less technologically advanced than this one, and so she looks around, picking up anything that could be used to improve upon her little ship. She doesn't have the means to buy or steal a new ship, but she's an engineer, and she knows how to make do.

She also, after some deliberation, picks up some supplies that are more necessary for mortals—food, for example. If Lyfrassir does, for whatever reason, decide to stay with her, she'd rather not have them dying on her. (Also, she may not need to eat, but the hunger pangs are getting annoying now that she's noticed them.)

However, she isn't really planning on that being an issue. Lyfrassir hadn't outright that they're not planning on coming back, and had seemed to be trying to imply through their flippancy that they would be, but Nastya could pick up on the fact that they're looking for an out.

And so, Nastya doesn't expect to see Lyfrassir at the ship when she comes back from her shopping. But there they are—they're sitting with their back against the outer hull, knees drawn up to their chest. She slows as she nears them, and when they look up Nastya can see the distraught look on their face. She doesn't know why they're back, or why they look so upset, but she figures this is the sort of situation that probably calls for tact.

"… I expected you to be gone when I came back." Blunt it is, then. She's never been one for tact anyways.

Lyfrassir laughs wetly at that—shit, had they been crying?—and replies, "That had been the plan." They clear their throat before continuing. "Things didn't really go, uh, as expected. You—you probably realized that, yeah, uh—" They drag their hand back through their hair, almost as upset as they'd been when Nastya had first picked them up. "I went to look for other survivors from Yggdrasil, like I told you I'd be doing, but there weren't any. And—and apparently, people know what happened to Yggdrasil, now. Sent out some teams to investigate a few weeks back, got the reports in less than a week ago. Big news, though that's no surprise given what'd happened to it."

This is news to Nastya; she'd already gotten all the information regarding Yggdrasil from Lyfrassir themself, and this time around had completely blocked out any of the chatter around her, as was habit whenever she (rarely) left to go planet-side. As a result, she had had no idea that Yggdrasil's fate had been discovered.

This doesn't seem like it would be enough to drive Lyfrassir into this state, though, given that their optimism about finding others had been low at best. And so she asks softly, "What happened?"

They take a minute to respond. "When I started asking around about survivors from Yggdrasil, people began to put two and two together, figured out that I was from there. They didn't… take it very well. People either wouldn't even talk to me, suspicious as though I've somehow _brought the fucking Bifrost with me,_ or the exact opposite, refusing to leave me alone so they could know what the hell had happened." Lyfrassir laughs and looks up at Nastya. "Hell, you murdered the entire crew of this ship, and half of the things in those bags are probably stolen, and yet _I'm_ the one being treated like—like a fucking serial killer, or something."

Nastya hums, processing all of this. "True. I've done far worse things than simply surviving the destruction of my world." (Though she'd also done that, not that it's any of Lyfrassir's business.) "… So, why did you come back here?"

They look confused at that. "W—what?"

"You said yourself, I am a murderer and a thief and much worse besides. So why did you choose to come back here, with me, rather than simply flee on your own?"

They don't seem to know the answer to that, have to take a moment to think about it. After a few beats, they say, "What else would I do?

"You're the only one who hasn't treated me like a, a harbinger of doom, or a _specimen_ to be studied—I'd prefer even traveling with one of you lot to that. You've just… treated me like a person." After a moment, they sheepishly add, "Also, I don't exactly have the money to get a ship of my own right now." Nastya snorts at that.

"Well," Nastya starts, tapping on the keypad on the side of the ship to open the entrance so she can drop off her things, "If you're going to be staying with me, you'll likely want to go shopping so you can stop wearing dead men's clothes." It's a somewhat morbid joke, but she's trying her best to lighten the mood a bit. She doesn't know what to do with what Lyfrassir's told her.

They laugh a bit at that, so she writes it off mentally as a success. But then they keep laughing, growing a little hysterical, and Nastya looks down at them, concerned. They calm down, eventually, muttering _"god, my life is so fucking weird"_ quietly to themself before taking a deep breath and standing up. "Yeah, that's probably a good idea."

Nastya just looks at them for a moment longer before nodding. She's not going to address that. "I can lend you some money, if you need some," she says instead; she had, in fact, stolen several of the items she'd picked up, and had also pick-pocketed several distracted passersby as she'd walked the streets, so she had plenty to spare.

They shake their head. "No, I had a bit on me when I left; it should be enough. But, uh," and they're sheepish again, now, not looking at her, "would you… come with me?" After seeing the confused look she gives them, they elaborate: "I don't really want to try my luck wandering around on my own, now that people know I'm from the Yggdrasil system and I know how they'll react. You don't have to do anything, just—I'd rather not go out on my own again."

Nastya feels a bit hesitant at this. She's not really good with social spaces—with people in general, really. But, she supposes, she's not really being asked to be social, is she? They're asking for more of a bodyguard; for shield between them and the rest of the residents of this planet. She can manage that, she thinks, and so she agrees. "Alright."

As she follows Lyfrassir around, she realizes that this is the first time she's ever really been shopping for clothes, even if they're not for her. When she was young, her clothing was always chosen for her, and when she was with the other Mechanisms, she rarely ever left the Aurora, most of her wardrobe secondhand from Carmilla and, later, Jonny. But now she's out with Lyfrassir, shadowing them as they duck in and out of stores, looking for somewhere with functional but comfortable clothes.

(She had argued with them to just get the basics from some department store, get out quick; they had argued back that this is what they'll be wearing for the foreseeable future, they weren't going to grab something at random that probably wouldn't even be comfortable. Nastya thinks back on how distracting and upsetting uncomfortable clothing can be, and concedes to this point.)

The point is, this is something new, and it feels weirdly… domestic, almost. _Normal,_ compared to the rest of her life.

It doesn't take long for Lyfrassir to buy clothing once they've found something they like, and soon enough they're ready to head back to the ship. Before they can, however, Lyfrassir stops her.

"You know, Rasputina, you don't exactly have any clothing either, other than what you're wearing. And—" They cut her off before she can interrupt them— "I am _not_ living with someone who wears the same clothing every single day. Even you have to admit that that crosses a limit."

She does, and since she doesn't have an argument against this, lets Lyfrassir drag her around to different stores, prompting her to find something she likes. Nastya ends up choosing things that looks similar to her wardrobe back on the Aurora, more neutral colors and practicality compared to what Lyfrassir had chosen—thought they didn't exactly go for fashion either, she notes, just an overabundance of sweatshirts and jumpers compared to her button-ups.

When they leave this planet, it is with their ship feeling a little more like a home to both of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOW HELLO SORRY THIS TOOK SO LONG. like a fool i had forgotten that this time of year tends to be busiest for me. writing machine broke, college machine in overdrive. i won't promise that i'll actually be able to get chapters out at a faster pace but i WILL promise that i will Try
> 
> in other news, i've been listening to laura jane grace's new album 'stay alive' nonstop since it came out, and imo the vibes of that album match the vibes of this fic very well. (this is me saying that you should listen to it, please, it is very good)
> 
> anyways i hope you enjoyed this chapter!!! (i'm not super fond of how disjointed it feels, but i wasn't really sure how else to fit all this in here, so it is what it is.) also as always feel free to point out any typos/formatting mistakes, i am my own beta reader & i can tell you that my beta reader is absolutely terrible at their job. misses absolutely everything, i swear


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